


The Emporium

by missazrael



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F, F/M, Game of Thrones-esque, Gen, Jeanmarco is the main ship here, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Slow Burn, more tags to be added later, others will be added later, side pairings all over the place, this is everyone who shows up so far
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 06:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1768975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missazrael/pseuds/missazrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the wars, Jean Kirschtein found work and lodging at The Emporium, working under the Ringmaster with his collection of monsters.  It's not a great life, but it's better than starving in the streets, and Jean knows it's better than he deserves.  It's only when the Ringmaster buys a centaur that Jean starts seeing things from a different point of view...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr tumblr tumblr](http://missazrael.tumblr.com)

It was raining the day they brought in the centaur.

It wasn’t the first centaur Jean had ever seen; he had a faint memory, from a time long ago, of seeing wild centaurs in a field, galloping together, their long tails flowing out behind them and their hooves sounding like thunder across the earth. He’d been afraid, but then the man holding him had held him against his chest and told him, in a voice low and comforting, not to be afraid, that the centaurs didn’t want to hurt him and if he stayed quiet and left them alone, they might grow used to him and allow him to touch their flanks. Jean had stayed quiet, but the centaurs had run away. He’d been disappointed, but the man holding him had simply laughed and swung him up onto his shoulders, assuring him that they’d come back tomorrow and see if the wild creatures had returned.

Jean assumes, now, that the man in the memory was his father, and he clings to the memory jealously, less interested in the centaurs than the man whose face he can no longer remember. He can still recall his mother, if he closes his eyes and concentrates, although as the years go by he’s less and less certain it’s her he’s picturing and not some kind looking woman who once visited The Emporium. All he knows for certain is that the Ringmaster is certainly not his father, nor related to him in any way; he makes that abundantly clear whenever he can.

The rain sluices down, turning the practice yard into a sucking quagmire of mud, and the centaur picks its way carefully through it, lifting its hooves as high as it can and setting them down slowly. Someone has tied its arms behind its back, and the man selling it leads it by a bridle designed for such creatures, one that gags its mouth and circles around behind its head. When Jean squinted through the rain, he could see the fetters around its ankles, hobbling it, and realizes those are responsible for its delicate, mincing gait. Whoever trussed it up wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause any problems or be able to get too rambunctious, but it seems pretty complacent to Jean. When its owner stops to talk to the Ringmaster—final negotiations on price, Jean assumes—the centaur stands sedately beside him, its head down, dark hair falling over its forehead and into its eyes. It shifts back and forth from foot to foot, but that could be from the treacherous mud in the yard, or simple discomfort at being hobbled.

The Ringmaster passes a bag heavy with gold to the man, and he passes the Ringmaster the centaur’s reins. He slaps it, once, on its horse shoulder, and it shies away, as far as it can go, its sodden tail flicking back and forth. Before the wars, before The Emporium, Jean had lived on a farm that raised and sold horseflesh, and he knows equine body language as well, if not better, than he knows human. There’s no love lost between the centaur and its previous owner. The Ringmaster snaps a sharp retort to the man, and Jean bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Although he can’t hear what the Ringmaster said over the sound of the rain, he’s been the victim of his sharp tongue enough to know that he doesn’t envy the centaur dealer.

The dealer leaves with his gold, the Ringmaster leads the centaur into the barn, and Jean scrambles down from his loft bedroom to assist him. The fire spirit rumbles quietly as he moves past its pen, and the gorgon shifts, its scales making slithering sounds as it curls tighter around itself, but he ignores them. He’s long since lost his fear of the other monsters in The Emporium, and he tugs the barn door open for the Ringmaster and his newest possession.

The Ringmaster doesn’t acknowledge him as he leads the centaur into the barn, but Jean didn’t expect him to. He closes the barn door against the heavy rain, pausing to check that the fire spirit didn’t get caught in a draft and is still burning—it is, and it even looks up at Jean with smoldering gold eyes—before he tags along after the Ringmaster to the center of the barn.

The barn is huge, its ceiling high and soaring, and stalls neatly line each side. The monsters of The Emporium are kept caged by magic, charms, cold iron bars, or some combination thereof. A few come to the doors of their stalls, looking out at their newest bedfellow, but most stay where they are, curled around themselves and uninterested in the new proceedings. Jean notices that the chimaera has gotten up, as it almost always does when the Ringmaster enters the barn, and has rocked back unto its haunches so it can watch the activities with its human eyes, and he turns away quickly. The chimaera’s human-like eyes are always worse than its animal ones.

“Kirschtein!” The Ringmaster’s voice cracks through the barn like his whip, and Jean scrambles to his side to assist him.

“Sir?”

The Ringmaster tosses him the centaur’s reins, and Jean nearly fumbles and drops them. “Clean it up and put it in stall eight.” He strides out of the barn without another word, and the chimaera watches him go with those otherworldly blue eyes before slouching back down and retreating to the corner of its stall.

Jean looks at the reins in his hands, amazed at the sudden responsibility. His duties at The Emporium usually involve mucking out stalls during the monster’s daily performances, going into town to buy their food, and feeding them at the end of the day; he rarely gets to interact with one, particularly one-on-one. Perhaps because the centaur is mostly horse, the Ringmaster has decided it’s different. He’s well aware of Jean’s background and abilities with horseflesh, after all, regularly sending him out to tend to the mounts of his business partners when they don’t have time.

He leads the centaur towards the grooming station, and it follows him sedately, doing its best to keep up on its mud-caked hooves. Once there, Jean winds its bridle around the hitching post, fairly certain it won’t be able to get away with its hands tied behind its back like that, and goes to get some water and his brushes. 

The water tank is in the stall next to the fire spirit, and after deliberating for a moment, Jean raps on the wall. “Hey. Heat up the water.” He waits, half-expecting the fire spirit not to cooperate, but then it mutters to itself and the metal tank starts to glow red and steam wafts up off the top of the water.

“Can I see it?” the fire spirit asks, once the water is warm all the way through, and Jean wonders how it’s possible for a monster to sound so human, to have such longing in its deep, raspy voice. 

“I’ll ask the Ringmaster,” he tells it as he scoops water into a bucket, and the fire spirit says something indistinct as Jean hears it move back to the other side of its stall.

The centaur hasn’t moved while Jean was gathering his supplies, simply standing and waiting for him to come back, although it shivers now and then. Jean needs to get it clean and in its stall before it takes a chill, and he dips a curry comb in the warm water and starts at the monster’s horse shoulder, the one its former owner slapped, brushing carefully to get the mud and dirt out of its coat.

He had thought the centaur’s horse coat was brown, but as he brushes it and the mud starts to fall away, he finds that it’s actually a dark dapple grey, its body covered with small white spots that spread out over its flanks like a field of stars. It’s lovely, a color he’s never seen in a centaur before, and Jean runs his fingers over a particularly elegant pattern of spots on the centaur’s hip admiringly. He remembers, with a sudden clarity that almost takes his breath away, that his father had had a horse with a pattern similar to this in his herd, and that it was his pride and joy. He can even remember the sound of weeping when the soldiers came and took all the horses, including the spotted one, away, and he forgets himself for a moment and leans his forehead against the centaur’s side.

He realizes his gaff when he hears the fire spirit laugh, and Jean straightens up abruptly, cursing his stupidity. The centaur could have started bucking and plunging while he was being foolish and leaning against it, and he would have been taken completely by surprise.

The centaur is watching him, having turned its head a little to the side, looking at him with huge, dark eyes, but it makes no attempt at escape. It only shifts its weight back and forth from hoof to hoof, and Jean realizes he’s going to need to take the fetters off to clean its feet.

“Listen, you,” he tells it, and his voice is too loud, ringing through the barn and sounding weak rather than authoritative. He swallows, and tries again, softer this time. “Listen, you… I’m going to take your fetters off so I can clean your hooves. If you try to kick me, you’ll be going in your stall without any more currying and no food, do you understand?”

The centaur blinks, once, its eyelashes so long they skim the top of its cheeks, and then it nods.

Jean ducks underneath it, and takes the fetters off its front legs first. He steps aside to get his hoof brush and pick, and the centaur takes the opportunity to stretch, leaning back and pushing its front legs out in front of it. It immediately goes back to standing straight when Jean returns; whoever had this centaur before The Emporium trained it very well. Jean ducks back under its belly—dark, with no stars, the dark coloration bleeding down into the centaur’s legs, he notices—and scoops up one hoof to clean it. Its hooves are filthy, and Jean has worked up a sweat by the time he gets the front ones clean. Above him, he can hear the centaur’s breathing deepen as he really gets in there with his pick, and he thinks he hears a sigh of pleasure and relief when he works loose a particularly large stone.

“That was bothering you, wasn’t it?” he asks absentmindedly, the way he would if he were caring for a horse, and the centaur surprises him when it rumbles something that sounds like garbled speech. Jean finishes what he’s doing and puts the hoof down, straightening up and cracking his back.

“You can talk, can’t you?” he demands, and the centaur only waits a beat before nodding its head. Jean feels a little silly; of course it can talk, it has a half that looks human, and he’s heard stories of centaurs that speak to humans before. He looks around the barn; the other monsters have retreated for the night, hiding in the corners of their stalls, and the only thing watching them is the chimaera’s snake tail. Jean is used to that, though; the chimaera likes to watch everything that goes on in the barn, and as long as it’s not using its human-appearing face, Jean doesn’t mind. What can a snake see, after all?

“I’m going to take the bit out of your mouth,” he tells the centaur, and it blinks its dark eyes in surprise. “If you try and bite me, you’ll regret it.” The centaur nods in understanding, and lowers its head. Jean’s hands shake a little, and it takes longer than he would like to get the bit-gag unclasped, but it comes loose and falls into his hand.

The centaur straightens up, sighing, and moves its jaw back and forth. Jean hears the joint pop, and he wonders how long it had been wearing the bit-gag. He watches as the centaur licks its lips, and then it turns to look at him. “Thank you,” it says quietly, meeting his eyes for a single moment before looking back at the floor.

“You’re welcome,” Jean tells it, a bit discomforted by how subdued the centaur is being, and moves around behind it to clean off its back hooves. “Same deal here, except if you kick me now, the bit is going back in.”

“I know.” And the centaur doesn’t kick him, even when Jean runs a comb through its tail and has to tug through some of the snarls and knots.

He steps back, admiring his handiwork. The horse half of the centaur is clean and groomed, and Jean has to admit that this particular centaur is a fine example of horseflesh. It’s on the smaller side, with fine-boned legs that speak of speed and grace, with delicately formed hooves. And its coloration is some of the prettiest Jean has ever seen on a horse.

He realizes the centaur is watching him again, but when Jean looks up at its face, it turns away. Jean frowns; that kind of timidity and subdued behavior is worrisome. It speaks of past abuse, and difficulty trusting. A horse like that would require a gentle hand, someone patient to work with it…

He shakes his head. It’s a centaur, not a horse, he reminds himself, and it’s not his job to get the monster ready to be ridden. He just needs to get it clean and put away for the night. With that thought in mind, he looks at its human half and grimaces. It’s just as dirty as the horse half had been, its skin caked with dust and mud, and Jean picks up the bucket of filthy water to go change it out for fresh.

The water in the tank is still lukewarm, which Jean figures the centaur will like. He doesn’t want to talk to the fire spirit anymore tonight, especially since it probably won’t be inclined to be helpful twice in a row. He brings the bucket of clean water back over, and dips a brush in it, lifting it to the small of the centaur’s back, just under its bound hands. He starts to scrub, and manages to reveal a small patch of pale, scrubbed-raw skin, before the centaur clears its throat and takes a step away from him.

“I can do this part myself,” it offers quietly, its head still down in an attitude of obedience, and Jean pauses.

“I would have to untie your arms.”

The centaur nods. “You could put the fetters back on and hobble my feet, if you’re afraid I would try to get away.”

That _is_ what Jean is worried about, but he doesn’t like that the centaur suggested it. He glares at the monster with narrowed eyes, but eventually leaves the brush resting on its horse back and goes for the fetters. He shakes the mud off them, not wanting to ruin all his previous hard work, then snaps them back on the centaur’s ankles.

The centaur’s skin is warm as Jean unties its arms, and as soon as it’s free, it reaches above its head for a long, slow stretch, and Jean can hear the bones in its spine crackle as they realign. “Thank you,” it breathes, and the relief in its voice is palpable. It stretches its arms out wide on either side, then picks up the brush Jean left on its back and starts scrubbing.

While the centaur keeps itself busy washing its human-like half, Jean goes to set up its stall. Stall eight shares a wall with the fire spirit’s stall, and is always pleasantly warm. He lays down some straw for the centaur to sleep in, makes sure it has fresh water and hay in its trough, and finds a horse blanket for its horse half. Almost as an afterthought, he gets a second blanket out of the store room, this one smaller and softer, in case the centaur wants something to put over its shoulders.

When he returns to the grooming station, horse blanket in his arms, Jean opens his mouth to ask the centaur if it’s done yet, but then immediately closes it when he catches sight of the monster. It has gotten itself clean, and its human-like half is just as dappled and spotty as its horse half. _Plague_ , Jean thinks, but then he realizes the centaur is freckled, its human-like half speckled in the coloration inverse of its horse half. The effect is striking, and Jean realizes why the Ringmaster paid so much for this particular centaur.

It turns to face Jean, looking more relaxed than ever before, and holds its hands out in front of itself, wrists together. “Thank you. I’m done now.”

Wordlessly, Jean tosses the horse blanket over its haunches, and it sighs as the fabric settles over it. It reaches down itself to clasp the blanket over its horse chest, then holds its hands out again, waiting patiently until Jean reties them. He notices that it left the bridle on its head, and that its hair is sticking out in funny little spikes and whirls, where it tried to wash it around the contraption. He unties its reins, and leads it to its stall, the centaur hobbling after him.

Jean assumes that the Ringmaster put up proper barriers and magic to keep the centaur in its stall; all the other stalls have all kinds of spells cast on them, and where spells fail, each door is run through with cold iron bars. The centaur looks around curiously when he leads it to its stall, but it doesn’t comment. Jean takes off its fetters first, then unties its hands. Finally, he gestures for it to lower its head, and when it does, he strips the bridle off.

He’s a little embarrassed to see the lines of dirt on the centaur’s freckled cheeks, where it couldn’t clean under the bridle before, but he figures it will take care of that itself once he’s gone. “Your food is there, water there, and if you need another blanket, it’s hanging there.” The centaur nods in understanding, and meets Jean’s eyes for just a moment before casting them down again.

“Thank you.”

Jean leaves it to its rest, and climbs to his own sleeping area, in the loft above the barn. He listens as the monsters below him settle in for the night, and the last thing he thinks about before he drifts off to sleep is the deep, rich brown of the centaur’s eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Jean wakes with the dawn the next morning, the early morning rays penetrating the cracks in the loft’s walls and falling on his face. As much as he’d like to roll over and sleep more, he knows he needs to get up and see to the monster’s needs, and he rolls off his pallet with a soft groan and a curse.

In the barn proper, the fire spirit is awake and standing, the side of its face and hands pressed against the wall of its stall that face the rising sun, its mouth moving in silent conversation. It does this every morning, and completely ignores Jean when he drops its breakfast in its trough. The gorgon is still sleeping, although some of its hair lifts and hisses at Jean; the chimaera watches him with one blood-rimmed, bestial eye, its human-like face hidden under a pile of animal parts, and Jean is grateful for that; the satyr and the anthousai greet him cheerfully enough, until he has to deny them extra food, at which point their moods turn sour. All in all, a typical morning, until Jean remembers the centaur.

It had stayed quiet during the night, which is unusual; new acquisitions to The Emporium usually spend their first nights, or their first weeks, making a great deal of noise and fussing the whole night through. Jean still remembers when the Ringmaster bought the satyr and the anthousai, and how he felt like he didn’t sleep for a month until they calmed down. Even now, the monsters sometimes rebel and misbehave during the night, making noise and causing problems which Jean has to come down from his loft and tend to. The quiet of the centaur unnerves him, and he hurries to its stall, half-afraid that it won’t be there any longer.

The centaur is where he left it the night before, resting in a corner of the stall, its legs tucked underneath its horse body and the blanket still wrapped around it. It looks up when Jean peers in on it, and offers a sad little half smile. “Good morning,” it says quietly, and gets to its feet. “Did you sleep well last night?”

None of the other monsters ever ask anything about Jean, and he just gapes at the centaur for a moment. He notices that it indeed washed the lines of dirt off its face at some point during the night, and that it tamed its hair so that it lies shiny and flat around its head. It took the second blanket Jean had left it and is wearing it around its human-like shoulders like a shawl

“If you get cold during the night,” Jean blurts out, “you should sleep on that side of your stall.” He points to the wall that the centaur shares with the fire spirit.

The centaur nods. “Thank you. I’ll remember that.” 

It’s so polite. Jean has never had a monster hold a conversation with him like this, as one-sided as the conversation is, and he wonders again about who owned it before The Emporium. He opens his mouth to ask, but the gorgon chooses that moment to wake up and start complaining, loudly, about its breakfast, and Jean hurries away to deal with it before the satyr and the anthousai take up the call. The fire spirit asks him if he has asked the Ringmaster if it could see it yet as he runs past, but Jean doesn’t have time to answer.

By the time he gets all the other monsters calmed down and eating, it’s almost time for the Ringmaster to show up, and Jean realizes that he forgot to feed the centaur. He’s hurrying to the store room to get it something to eat—oats, he figures, and hay, the things horses eat—when the barn door bangs open, and everything goes still. 

The Ringmaster enters, his cloak swirling behind him, and the monsters slouch to the front of their stalls for his morning inspection. He brushes past Jean, ignoring him as though he weren’t even there, and moves from stall to stall, peering in at each monster in his collection. He lingers a moment longer, as always, at the chimaera’s stall, and Jean averts his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at the chimaera’s human-like face. The Ringmaster stops last at the centaur stall, and looks over his newest possession with a calculating eye before nodding. Jean feels inexplicable relief at that; who knows what the Ringmaster would have done if the centaur did not meet his expectations?

“Kirschtein!”

“Sir!” Jean hurries to the Ringmaster’s side, his head down and gaze averted. Two years past he grew taller than the Ringmaster, a fact that seems to rankle him no end, and he does his best to make himself appear shorter whenever he can.

The Ringmaster gestures towards the centaur, which is standing at the door of its stall, its head down demurely. _I didn’t tell it to do that_ , Jean thinks. _It did that on its own_. “What do you think?”

“… sir?” Jean is confused; the Ringmaster never asks his opinion on anything, let alone the quality of his monsters.

The Ringmaster shoots him a dirty look. “Of the beast, Kirschtein. Do try to keep up.”

“Yes, sir.” Jean can feel himself flushing with embarrassment, and looks down at the toes of his boots. The leather is wearing thin, he notices; soon he’ll need a new pair, or have to go barefoot. “It’s a fine example of horseflesh, sir. Its legs are good and it is probably quite fast. The pattern of its coat is high quality and unusual, which makes it valuable.”

The Ringmaster waves one hand at Jean, silencing him. “You tell me things I already know, and you bore me. Did it behave itself last night?”

“Yes, sir. It didn’t fight me at all, and spent a quiet night in its stall.”

The Ringmaster nods at that, apparently pleased by what he’s heard, and steps closer to the stall. The centaur shifts from one hoof to the other and watches the Ringmaster through its eyelashes. “I paid a lot of money for you,” he tells it, “and I expect that my investment won’t be in vain. Nod if you understand.”

The centaur nods.

“Good. I’m glad we understand each other.” The Ringmaster spares a glance at Jean, then turns to leave. Jean almost lets him, until he hears a soft, wounded sound from the fire spirit’s stall. Then he remembers his promise.

“S-sir?”

Jean almost never tries to speak to the Ringmaster unless he’s answering a direct question, and the man pauses, looking over his shoulder. “What?”

Jean forces down his nervousness. “The fire spirit wants to know if it can see it.” The Ringmaster is silent, and Jean rushes on. “It helped me last night and warmed some water to clean the centaur. You can’t wash a horse with cold water, sir, it’s bad for their health, and I didn’t have to burn any wood because the fire spirit did it all for me.”

The Ringmaster still doesn’t respond, and Jean dares to look up. The Ringmaster’s expression is flat, but not disbelieving, and after looking at Jean a moment longer, he turns to look at the fire spirit. “If you perform well this afternoon and impress me, I’ll allow you one minute with it this afternoon,” he tells it, and sweeps out of the barn.

The fire spirit makes a soft, contented sound, and settles to the back of its stall, the gorgon immediately demands why _it_ gets special treatment, and Jean rolls his eyes. He hears a polite, quiet cough that might be laughter from the centaur’s stall as he hurries off to shush the gorgon.

~*~

The afternoon’s show starts off without a hitch, and Jean thinks ruefully that if all the monsters could get along this well every day, they’d have the finest show in the land. The satyr and anthousia charm the audience early on with their dancing and the flowers they grow, and an elderly matron positively swoons when the satyr plucks up a beautiful bloom and presents it to her with a rakish grin. More than one man in the audience tips his hat at the anthousai, and it twitters and blushes and plays the part of the beautiful, blushing maiden to the hilt. They dance each other out of the ring and lets Jean corral them back to their stall with a minimum of arguing and bad behavior, and he gives the satyr a carrot and the anthousai a cup of fresh rainwater from yesterday to keep them quiet.

He notices, during the gorgon’s performance, that its hair was lackluster, content to coil around its shoulders instead of rising up and hissing at the audience. Jean makes a note of that, wondering if he should ask the Ringmaster what to do to get a gorgon’s hair active again; fortunately, the gorgon is frightening enough on its own, and even with its metal blindfold securely in place, the audience shrieks and draws back when it turns its face towards them as it slouches around the ring. Even now, as used to it as he is, Jean shivers when it moves past him, back to its stall, and its scales slide over each other with a sound like metal scraping over bone.

Jean passes the centaur, waiting at the outskirts of the ring, as he herds the gorgon back where it belongs, and he catches the centaur’s slightly furrowed brows when it sees the metal mask the gorgon wears over its eyes. It reaches out, touching the gorgon’s shoulder lightly as it moves past, and the monster whirls on it, its hair suddenly alive and hissing furiously, and Jean shoves it forward before it can attack. 

The gorgon wants to know what touched it as Jean wrestles it back into its stall, and it spits in Jean’s face when he yells at it and asks why it got so pissed off. Even with its eyes shielded, gorgon saliva burns, and Jean’s skin is red and cracked when he finally gets back to the ring.

His irritation washes away when he sees the performance going on at the center of the ring. Even the crowd is hushed, holding their breath in quiet anticipation. The centaur is standing on its hind legs, its front legs held up in the air and its human-like arms spread wide, turning in tight, controlled circles as the Ringmaster walks around it, his whip lashing out and flicking at the beast’s hooves. The centaur holds its tail high, and in the bright lights of the ring, Jean notices anew how its speckled hide and freckled skin stand out in contrast to each other, one a negative image of the other.

The Ringmaster conjures a glittering silver ball from under his cape and tosses it to the centaur, and the monster catches it with its human hands and comes down onto all four feet. It looks at the Ringmaster quizzically, its expression more confused than defiant, and the Ringmaster lashes out with his whip, knocking the ball out of the centaur’s hands and to the ground in front of it. The centaur prances nervously but does not bolt, shaking one of its hands out to the side, and Jean wonders if he has an extra supply of whip salve available. 

The Ringmaster points to the ball and cracks his whip above the centaur’s head, and the monster rears up slightly in alarm, and Jean bites the inside of his cheek. _It doesn’t understand,_ he thinks to himself, _it’s never been trained for this, it doesn’t know what you want it to do!_

The centaur is a fast learner, though, and cautiously puts one hoof on the ball. The whip sings again, and it snorts, its eyes wide and rolling with fear, but then it lifts its second hoof and lets it join the first. The Ringmaster nods and waves his hand, and the ball suddenly balloons in size, abruptly large enough to fit all four hooves, but the magic is too much for the centaur. It rears up, whinnying loudly and with panic, and charges once in a circle around the ring before thundering back towards its stall, and Jean has to leap aside to keep from being trampled.

The crowd murmurs, the Ringmaster clenches his jaw in a rare show of fury, and Jean hurries to release the fire spirit and the chimaera, hustling them into the ring for the show’s finale, quietly praying that they’ll do their parts and perform admirably.

He finds the centaur in its stall, backed up against a corner and shivering, its arms crossed over its chest and its head down. He brings the whip salve and speaks quietly to it from the door of its stall, the same way he’d speak to a frightened horse. “Hey. I’m going to come in now, okay? I have something for your hand, so it stops hurting and doesn’t get infected, all right?” The centaur doesn’t answer, but its body language shifts a little, and Jean knows it’s listening. “I’m opening the door now. Just me, okay? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Yeah, he’s half horse himself, he knows what you’re going through!” the satyr yells from across the barn, and Jean has to close his eyes and breathe out through his nose to keep from whirling around and yelling back.

He opens his eyes to a soft sound from the centaur, and it’s lifted its head to look at him. He tries to smile, and holds out one hand. “Can I see? I’ve got a salve and a bandage for that, if he hit you.”

The centaur shifts back and forth, then offers him its left hand, and Jean grimaces when he sees the whip mark across the back of it. Not the worst he’s ever seen, but the Ringmaster could have held back a little more. He takes its hand and starts gently working the salve into the cut, and the centaur exhales noisily.

“I didn’t know what he wanted me to do,” the centaur confesses, and it sounds almost human in its misery. “If he’d just _told_ me, I would have done it.”

“The Ringmaster doesn’t speak when he’s in the ring,” Jean explains, satisfied with the salve application and starting to wind a bandage around it. “He only uses his whip and hand gestures.”

“He never told me what those meant.” The centaur sounds so distressed that Jean looks up, and he’s surprised at how upset it seems. It’s not uncommon for the monsters to act up during performances or to make mistakes, but he’s never seen one get so anxious over it. He’s even more surprised by his impulse to reassure the centaur.

“Look, you’re new, I don’t even know why he had you out there. I’m sure he’ll work with you and figure out a routine. He did that with all the other monsters.” He finishes wrapping the centaur’s hand and lets it go, but the centaur suddenly twists its hand around, clutching Jean’s hand and squeezing it, its eyes still wide and frightened.

“Are you sure? He’s not going to kick me out?”

Jean blinks; none of the monsters have ever asked him that before. “No, why would he? He paid a lot of money for you, he’ll want to make his investment back.”

The centaur breathes out in a sigh, and it relaxes for the first time since it left the ring. “Okay,” it says softly, relaxing its hold on Jean’s hand and giving it a little squeeze before dropping it. “Thank you… Kirschtein?”

This monster is just full of surprises, and Jean shakes his head. “You can call me Jean, if you want. Just don’t do it in front of the Ringmaster.”

The doors crash open behind them, and the moment shatters. Jean scrambles out of the centaur’s stall and shuts the door behind him, standing at attention as the chimaera, fire spirit, and Ringmaster come back into the barn. The show must have finished well; the Ringmaster isn’t walking like he’s been constipated for weeks, and the fire spirit and chimaera move to their stalls smoothly and without fighting, although they both look exhausted. The Ringmaster sees them to their stalls and shuts them in, then takes a few steps to the side to look at the centaur. He stares at it, his gaze steely and cold, and the centaur hangs its head and looks ashamed of itself.

“I should have expected as much,” the Ringmaster finally tells it, and his voice is icy. “Your kind is only good for one thing.” The centaur flinches, but nods. “If you expect to stay, you’ll have to learn to earn your keep.”

He whirls on his heel then. “Kirschtein!”

Jean jumps. “Sir!”

“Teach this thing something appropriate. Make a show with it. You have one week.” 

Jean can feel his jaw unhinge, and he realizes he must look a fool, but he’s never had any responsibility like this before, never dealt with any of the monsters this closely or had anything to do with the show beyond shuffling the monsters back and forth. The Ringmaster is watching him though, expecting a response, and Jean closes his mouth, swallows, and nods. “Y-yes, sir.”

“Good. See that it happens.” The Ringmaster turns to walk away, but then the fire spirit clears its throat pointedly. It’s standing at the door to its cell, next to the centaur’s, its hand wrapped around the metal bars and its face pressing close. It looks tired, almost human, but its eyes are glowing brightly in expectation.

The Ringmaster looks over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed. He reaches into his cloak and pulls out a crystal sphere, and Jean finds his attention riveted to it, just as helpless as the fire spirit to pull his gaze away. The Ringmaster rolls it back and forth over his fingertips, and the darkness within the sphere rolls and coils around itself, shifting shades of black on black, a blackness so deep it feels like it pulls all the light out of the room. Jean watches the Ringmaster’s thumb, unable to look at the sphere directly, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees stars bloom inside the sphere, stars and galaxies and distant, indescribable clouds, all the vastness of the universe contained across the fingertips of a man. And from all that swirling chaos, from all the void, a pair of eyes rise up, knit together from nothingness, shadowed, dark green eyes, that look at nothing except the fire spirit, that meet the fire spirit’s flickering golden eyes and flare to bright, sparkling life.

The air grows heavy with magic, and Jean can hear the fire spirit’s hair crackling as the flames grow higher, as it draws whatever it draws from the sphere, and distantly, the hears the soft sound the centaur makes as it pulls back, away from the sphere. Jean can feel the hair on the back of his neck rise, can feel his heart start to pound, and he clenches his hands and his jaw, unsure if he’s going to start screaming or weeping if this goes on much longer but unable to look away.

Then the Ringmaster’s hand moves, the sphere dances across his fingertips again, and then it disappears into his cloak and the tension breaks. The fire spirit moans, the sound filled with inexplicable longing, and collapses back into its stall. “One week, Kirschtein,” the Ringmaster tells Jean as he strides past him, and then he’s out of the barn and Jean is left alone with the monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the thing the Ringmaster did with the crystal sphere _totally_ looks exactly like David Bowie playing with the crystals in Jareth's first scene in Labyrinth. 
> 
> Any crit or comments are greatly appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

“So what do you know how to do?”

The centaur blinks at Jean like it doesn’t understand the question, and Jean silently accepts that this is going to be a long afternoon.

He got up early today, even before the fire spirit was up and facing the rising sun, and fed all the monsters. To his pleasant surprise, the whole process goes much faster when they’re all still sleeping; the only reaction he got was a raised snake hissing at him from the gorgon, and the chimaera looking at him with one bright, golden lion eye, since it never sleeps. Once they were all fed and watered, he slipped into the centaur’s stall with a curry comb, ropes, and a halter that ties under the centaur’s chin, and it had smiled at him and stood still while he brushed it. Once its coat was in order, the centaur had patiently held its arms behind its back while Jean tied them, lowered its head for the halter (looking faintly grateful that Jean wasn’t using the one with the gag bit), and followed him outside.

Jean brings the centaur out to the yard behind the barn, the area where he works with the horses the Ringmaster’s associates bring him sometimes, and leads the centaur to the middle. 

“You don’t know _anything_? What kind of place owned you before?” Jean had thought the centaur would at least know a few commands. He’s actually a little unsure on how to start from scratch.

The centaur twitches its dark tail back and forth. “I was privately owned before,” it explains. “I didn’t have to perform like you do here.”

“What, someone bought a centaur just to buy one?” Jean waves one hand, cutting off the centaur’s answer. “Whatever, let me see your paces while I think about this.”

The centaur dutifully walks, trots, and canters in a circle around Jean, and he turns, watching it move, and considers his options. Now that he thinks about it, it could be kind of interesting to create an act from scratch. He’s seen the acts the Ringmaster created enough times, and thinks he could come up with something similar. He could even get himself involved in it, perhaps, and show the Ringmaster that he has some kind of worth beyond feeding the monsters and slopping out their stalls.

“Are you broken?” he asks the centaur when it stops cantering, and it blows air out his nose at him in disgust.

“ _No_ , I’m quite whole, thank you.”

This time it’s Jean who blinks, thinking he’s missed a social cue of some kind. “I meant are you broken for a saddle? Can someone ride you?”

The centaur paws at the ground with one front hoof, looking down, and when it raises its head, it looks almost shy. “I’ve been ridden, yes.”

“Okay, good. Wait here.” Jean loops the lead attached to the centaur’s halter around the post in the center of the yard, and goes into the barn to retrieve a saddle. When he brings it back, he expertly tosses it onto the centaur’s back, and the monster prances a little in surprise before settling down.

“I thought you said you were broken?”

“It has… been a time since I’ve been ridden.”

“You’re not going to buck me off, are you?”

“No, Jean. I won’t buck you off.”

“Good.” Jean hitches one foot in a stirrup and hoists himself onto the centaur’s back, pleased in spite of himself that it called him by name. The centaur dances a few steps to the side as Jean settles on its back, much like a frightened horse, and Jean instinctively grabs for its mane. Instead of a handful of long hair, he ends up grabbing the monster’s hands, and both he and the centaur freeze. The centaur’s hands are warm and strong in Jean’s, feeling just like human hands, and he hurries to drop them, ignoring how his face feels warmer than it did just moments ago. He grips the saddle’s pommel, holding it tightly enough to make his knuckles bleed white, and nudges the centaur’s sides with his heels. “Let’s see your paces again.”

The centaur obliges, working its way through its paces, and Jean falls into the familiar motions of riding, his thighs and core shifting and moving with the monster, and it allows him to forget the feeling of the centaur’s hands in his own. The centaur stops after cantering around in a circle three times, its sides heaving under Jean’s legs, and Jean absentmindedly reaches forward to pat it on the side of the neck. He ends up patting it on its human waist, above where horse hair gives way to smooth human-like skin, and he retracts his hand like it’s been burnt.

“Nice.” Nice doesn’t really do justice to the centaur’s paces, which are smooth and clean and incredibly easy to fall into rhythm with, but it’s all Jean is going to acknowledge. “Wouldn’t mind seeing you gallop.”

The centaur takes a moment to get its breath, then suggests, its voice shy, “If you take the lead off, I could show you my gallop.”

Jean thinks about it, and as he does, his hand strays to the centaur’s waist again, stroking over the smooth horse hair there. “No,” he finally decides, and shakes his head. “I can’t take your lead off.”

The centaur sniffs, and Jean thinks he’s offended it again. “Where would I go?” it asks him, and flexes its shoulders and arms, opening and closing its hands where Jean can see, its muscles straining against the ropes restraining it. “I wouldn’t survive out there without a herd, especially not like this.”

“That’s not what I meant.” This is stupid, Jean shouldn’t be getting so flustered over one of the monsters sassing him. “The Ringmaster would be furious with us both if he saw you out here without a lead.”

The centaur sniffs again, but it seems appeased, and starts walking again, moving in a slow circle around the post, the lead taut to the pole. “The Ringmaster doesn’t know much about centaurs if he thinks I’d run away.”

“What do you mean?” Jean braces his hands on the centaur’s horse shoulders, letting himself be lulled by the gentle rocking of the monster underneath him. It feels just like a horse, and horses are forever associated in Jean’s mind with the concept of home and comfort.

The centaur sighs, but explains. “Centaurs need each other to survive. I can’t clean my front hooves by myself if they get a stone in them, and I can’t reach behind me to brush my tail. If I was in the woods and got one of my hind legs stuck, I wouldn’t be able to get it loose on my own. Centaurs need herds to survive, and I don’t have one. Why would I run? I would just die out there on my own.”

Jean didn’t know that. He thinks it over for a few moments, and realizes that everything the centaur just said sounds right. “Did you have a herd before?”

“No. I was born into captivity.” The centaur slows down, coming to a standstill, and hangs its head. It looks so dejected that Jean almost reaches out and runs a hand down its human-like spine, almost tries to comfort it the way he would a horse, but then the centaur picks its head back up and looks off into the distance. “My dam used to tell me about my sire, though, and the herd she came from. She said that her herd was a hundred centaurs strong, and that when they ran it sounded like thunder from their hooves. She said my sire was an enormous stallion, all covered in stars like me, except his went down onto his legs and his belly and that his tail was as white as snow. He could have had anyone in the herd, but he chose her, and they ran together under the moon.”

“What happened to them?” Jean asks when the centaur pauses, and his voice is soft, almost reverent. In his mind’s eye, he can see the centaur’s herd, and it looks like the one he remembers seeing when he was very small, the herd of centaurs that was his first memory, the herd he shared with his father.

“They were captured,” the centaur tells him, and there’s a lifetime of pain and loss in the words. “Captured and separated and sold to the highest bidders. My dam fetched a handsome price, she said.” It sounds bitter now. “Even more so when I was born. My owner was very happy I’d been born a colt instead of a filly.”

“Are centaur colts worth more?”

“You could say that.” The centaur shakes its head and looks back over its shoulder at Jean. “What about you? Is the Ringmaster your sire?”

“My… oh gods, _no_.” Jean slides off the centaur’s back and takes hold of its lead, walking it to the pole so he can untie it and they can go inside. “He’s not my father. He’s just some guy that took me in.”

“Really?” The centaur sounds curious as it walks quietly behind Jean. “What happened to your dam and sire?”

Jean shrugs. “The wars,” he said shortly. He doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s bad enough that he can’t remember what his father looked like, or that he thinks he’s forgetting his mother’s face a little more everyday. He glances at the centaur, and it looks sympathetic, like it’s really listening, and Jean thinks that the monsters with the human-like faces are some of the hardest to deal with and be around. “We watched a herd of centaurs in the woods once. Me and my dad.”

“You did?” The centaur sounds interested. “Wild ones?”

“Yeah. He said…” Jean stands stark-still, a memory he thought he’d lost flooding back, as rich and vibrant as if it had happened yesterday. “He told me they were lucky, and that our horses and land would be better for having them nearby.” He closes his eyes, his father’s voice whispering through his head, there and then gone, lost again beneath the mental flotsam of the years, but it was there. For a moment, he remembered his father’s voice, and something he’d told him, and Jean shivers in the afternoon sunshine.

Something bumps into his back, gentle and reassuring, and Jean spins around. The centaur had lowered its head and nudged him between the shoulder blades with it, much like a horse would use its nose to hurry along a lagging foal, and it smiles at him when Jean looks at it. He thinks, absurdly, that if the centaur’s arm were untied it would have hugged him, and he’s not sure he wouldn’t have accepted the embrace.

“That’s a lovely story,” the centaur tells him, still smiling faintly. “I wish we had more men around like your sire.”

Jean looks at the centaur a little longer, his eyes tracing around the curve of its smile, before he turns away and starts walking quickly back to the barn, tugging on its lead as he does. “Yeah, well, he’s dead now.”

“May he run forever through the stars,” the centaur says quietly, but Jean pretends he doesn’t hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shorter than usual this time. I had more I wanted to add, but that last line just seemed like the perfect place to stop! So here's a teaser... the next chapter will start out with the satyr and anthousai.


	4. Chapter 4

“Kirschtein! Hey, Kirschtein, come here!”

If he just ignores it, it will go away.

“Kirschtein… Kiiiiirschteeeeein, I know you can heeeeeear meeee…”

Any minute now. Any minute, and it will stop.

“Kirschtein! Help me, I think I’m dying!”

If only the gods would be so good.

“Jean! Hey, Jean! Jean, come here, I need to talk to you.”

That’s different. It’s learned his first name.

“Jean Jean Jean Jean _Jean_ , Jeanny Jeanny Jeanbo, Jeanny Jean Jean…”

“ _What_?” Jean finally gives in, slamming down the cloth he’d been using to clean tack in the supply room. It hits the floor with a very unsatisfying thunk, and he thinks sourly that he should have thrown a brush, or something heavier. “You’ve been fed, so don’t tell me how hungry you are!”

“I want to talk to you, come here!”

‘Ridiculous,’ Jean thinks as he gets to his feet and stalks across the barn. ‘I’m getting hustled by satyrs now.’ This is probably setting a bad precedent, he knows, when he sees the gorgon and the fire spirit at the doors of their stalls, curious about all the noise and fuss. He’s never known the satyr to be so demanding before, or so incessant about its wants. Usually, as long as it’s fed, it stays quiet in the stall it shares with the anthousai; the noisiness is something new. As is it calling him by name. The centaur is the only monster who calls him by name, let alone his given name; the others call him stableboy, if they call him anything at all. He could even understand being called Kirschtein, since that’s how the Ringmaster addresses him, but being called Jean is definitely new.

“ _What_ ,” he demands, his voice dripping with acid, as he stands in front of the satyr’s stall door. “Make it quick, I’m busy.”

The satyr rolls its hazel eyes at him, but gets up from where it was lounging in the corner of its stall and trots to the door on its stubby little legs. The anthousai gets up too, much more gracefully, and practically floats beside its fellow nature spirit until they’re both at the door.

“We want to go outside,” the satyr informs him. “You take the centaur outside, we want to go outside too.” 

The anthousai nods, and lifts one green-fingered hand towards Jean’s, where he’s holding one of the stall’s bars. He drops his hand hurriedly, moving it away from the monster’s grasp. The anthousai is one of the most human-looking monsters in the Emporium, passing almost entirely for a young maiden with long, reddish brown hair, and it makes him nervous. It’s only when it smiles and shows its green teeth, or green fingernails, or when the flowers in its hair start moving and opening and closing, that it becomes obvious that it’s not human.

“You’re not allowed,” Jean tells them flatly. “You know that.”

“But the centaur goes outside with you.” The satyr wraps an arm around the anthousai’s waist. “We’d stay close by.”

“We would,” the anthousai confirms, its voice light and lilting. “We would not stray far.”

“Sure you wouldn’t.” Jean always has to listen closely when the anthousai speaks, or he loses track of what it’s saying in the sing-song rhythms of its voice. “The centaur and I are working on an act for the performances. We’re not just fooling around out there.”

“We could work too!” The satyr pushes its face forward, its nubby little horns bumping against the bars of the stall. “I could grow stuff! All sorts of stuff!” It waves a hand at the barn at large. “Food for everyone! It would save the Ringmaster’s coin!”

“I’ve never seen you grow food.” Jean has seen the satyr grow things during the performances, of course, but mostly grasses and flowers.

“Because I grow flowers for the crowd!” The satyr’s voice is full of scorn. “And that’s mostly because she helps me!”

The anthousai smiles, showing a faint glimmer of green teeth, and nods. “We grow flowers to impress the maids and mothers. We could easily grow more.” It reaches up into its hair and plucks a small bloom out from behind its ear. It holds it in the palm of its hand, and the bloom starts to shiver and move. Jean watches, interested in spite of himself, until the flower morphs and turns into a pea pod. The anthousai offers it to him, and he takes it without thinking. “You see? We could provide fresh greens for all our fellow captives, and for yourself and the Ringmaster as well.”

Jean turns the pea pod over in his hands, then snaps it in half to look inside. The three peas inside certainly look ordinary. “How do I know this isn’t poisoned?”

The anthousai looks offended, and the satyr rolls its eyes again. “Why’d we poison you, huh? You feed us and get rid of our shit, and who knows what kind of idiot the Ringmaster would get next?”

“Wow, consider me convinced.” Jean eats one of the peas anyway, and it crunches crisp and delicious between his teeth. He waits a moment, but if the pea was poisoned, it’s a slow acting one, and his stomach stays smooth and unruffled. “So what do you get out of this deal? It sounds to me like you’re just signing on for more work.”

The anthousai smiles at that, its expression tinged with sadness. “We would get a chance to feel the sun on our skin again, and to breathe air fresh with life.”

The satyr nods, its expression becoming serious. “We want to grow things, you know? That’s what we’re supposed to do, and we can’t in here. It’s _boring_.”

Jean eats the other two peas, considering. “I’ll ask the Ringmaster,” he finally acknowledges, and both the satyr and the anthousai smile widely at him as he walks away.

“Hey!” he hears the fire spirit yell from across the barn, “if you start growing stuff, can you grow me some oak branches?”

Jean tries to go back to what he was doing and continue cleaning tack, but he can’t concentrate. He doesn’t want to talk to the Ringmaster, doesn’t want to ask him for what will be perceived as a favor, especially for one he doesn’t understand. He gets the desire to go outside, and even to grow plants on a larger scale, but he doesn’t understand the satyr and anthousai’s angle. What would they be getting out of it? Monsters never do anything for free, he knows—it was the first lesson the Ringmaster taught him, one that he drilled into his head, over and over again—and he can’t put his finger on what it is they want.

He realizes he’s been cleaning the same buckle for the last five minutes, and sets it down in disgust. What he needs is a _friend_ , someone he can talk to about these kinds of things. Living at the Emporium isn’t very conducive to friendship, though; they’re set on the edge of town, and the only time he sees people his own age is when he goes into town, once a week, to restock their food supplies. He used to try to make friends with the vendors he bought from, or even talk to the other youths roaming the market, but they always looked at him through narrowed eyes and kept their answers short and cold. Still, he’d persisted until he’d heard whispers of “monster’s boy” and “witchcraft,” whispers that had been just a touch too loud to be subtle, whispers they had wanted him to hear. After that, he went into town, got in, and got out as quickly as he could, and everyone had seemed happier for it.

When Jean thinks back, he realizes that he can’t remember the last time he had a full conversation with another human being.

That thought is too depressing for words, and Jean sighs, angrily wiping the back of his sleeve across his eyes. He can’t show weakness in front of the monsters, they prey on that, and he abruptly stands up and stalks across the barn. He thinks he’s heading for his loft, where he can brood on this in peace, but finds himself standing in front of the centaur’s stall. 

The centaur looks up and smiles when it sees him there, and walks closer to the door. “Hello, Jean,” it says, and Jean can’t help the almost overwhelming sense of relief he feels when it calls him by name. “Can I help you with something?”

“Vegetables,” he demands, his hands wrapping around the bars in the centaur’s door. “Why do they want to grow vegetables?”

The centaur tilts its head to the side for a moment, looking confused, but then its eyes clear as it understands. “The satyr and the anthousai?”

“Yeah, them. They want to go outside and grow things. Why?”

The centaur twitches its tail back and forth, and Jean can’t help the feeling that he’s disappointed it somehow. What surprises him even more is how much that disappointment stings. “It’s in their nature. It must feel unnatural to them to be inside all the time, away from the earth.”

“I get that. The Ringmaster isn’t going to care about that. He’s going to want to know why he should let them outside, because they’re going to want a favor in return.”

The centaur looks at him a moment longer, then looks away. Its jaw tightens, and Jean sees a tiny muscle twitch in its cheek. “The Ringmaster will know what they want,” it says quietly. “You don’t need to worry about that.” It shakes its head, and when it looks back at Jean, its expression is earnest again, even helpful. “You’re the one who would have to watch them while they’re out there. Does the idea of that bother you?”

Jean shrugs. “Not really.” The satyr and the anthousai have been with the Emporium the longest, even predating Jean’s arrival. When he was much younger, he used to pretend that the anthousai was really his older sister, and the satyr an uncle. That had all ended when the Ringmaster had heard him addressing them familiarly one day; Jean still carries scars on his back from that experience, and the satyr and anthousai have been distant ever since. Today has been the first day in years that they made an effort to speak with him.

The centaur’s voice draws him back into the present. “… and if that’s fine with you, then you should tell the Ringmaster how much coin he’ll save by letting them grow some of the food supply.” It hesitates before continuing. “And tell him how much healthier we’ll all look with some variety in our diet.”

Jean opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, the fire spirit scoffs rudely and interrupts. “Right, because we all want to be more attractive and enticing, don’t we?”

The centaur ducks its head down, and Jean catches the faintest hint of color in its cheeks before he turns to address the fire spirit. “Stop eavesdropping, you ass.”

The fire spirit steps away from its stall door, holding its hands up, palms out, in a startlingly human-like gesture. “Look, I want some oak branches as much as the next guy, but this isn’t the best idea those two have ever had.” It rolls its eyes, burning embers turning over in its face. “But no one ever said they were the brains of the Emporium.”

“It won’t change anything,” the centaur tells it quietly, “but it might make things more tolerable.”

Jean frowns, lost. “What are you talking about?”

The fire spirit barks bitter laughter and retreats deeper into its stall. “Ask the centaur. He’s the one who thinks you’re his herd, he should be the one to tell you.”

The centaur won’t talk anymore after that, hiding in the corner of its stall with its arms around its head, and Jean eventually leaves the barn to go talk to the Ringmaster.

The Ringmaster lives in a house next to the stage where the monsters perform their daily shows, and the house is larger than the barn. It’s enormous, sprawling and opulent, decorated with buttresses and small sculptures and piping, and in his less charitable moments, Jean thinks the Ringmaster is trying to compensate for something. He’s not allowed in the house, which looks like more of a cathedral than a home, and has only been inside once or twice. Still, he thinks that going to the back door would make the Ringmaster more angry than going to the front, and he gathers all his courage, climbs the marble steps to the towering, wooden front door, and raps on it.

To his surprise, it opens immediately, and Jean almost loses his nerve and flees back to the barn. He was certain the Ringmaster wouldn’t be home, and he could return to the barn and tell the monsters that he’d tried, but it was a no go. Then a short, blond child looks out from the crack in the door with one huge blue eye, and asks in a soft, high voice “Yes? Who are you?”

It must be some new help, and Jean swallows down his indignation that the Ringmaster didn’t think it important that the new page know what the stableboy looks like. “I’m Jean.” He gestures over his shoulder with one thumb. “I take care of the monsters.”

The child frowns, then his eye goes wide. “You’re Kirschtein?”

Jean tries not to let his shoulders slump in defeat. “Yeah, that’s me.”

The child opens the door a little wider, concern writ all over his face. “Is something wrong? Is everyone in there okay?”

“The monsters are fine.” 

The child relaxes visibly, his expression smoothing out, and opens the door the rest of the way. He’s taller than Jean thought at first, and older too, maybe only a few years younger than himself. He’s tiny, though, frail and delicate, with a heart-shaped face framed by light, fluffy blond hair, and he’s wearing a dark, immaculate page uniform. Jean suddenly feels very grubby in his worn, threadbare clothing and boots worn so thin that his toes are a few good rubs away from poking through. The page, he notices, is wearing heavy leather shoes, the surface polished until it shines like a mirror. “Are you here to see the Ringmaster?” the page asks, and even his voice is sweeter and more melodic than Jean’s. “He’s not here at the present, but you’re welcome to come inside and wait.”

Jean laughs at that. “You’re new, huh? The Ringmaster doesn’t want someone like me inside. I’ll befoul the carpet or something.”

The page tilts his head to the side, and for a moment, Jean is reminded of the centaur. “You don’t look very dirty to me.”

“Yeah, you’re definitely new.” Jean turns to go back to the barn. “Never mind, I’ll come back later.”

“Wait!” The page darts out after him, and puts a hand on his arm to restraint him. Jean glances down at it, more surprised than anything, and the page drops his hand immediately, moving to hide it behind his back. “My apologies, sir. I didn’t mean to touch you, sir.”

“I… I don’t care if you touch me.” For the first time, Jean is glad he works in the barn and not in the house.

“Oh.” The page stops talking, and an awkward silence stretches between them before the little guy pipes up again. “If you have something you need to discuss with the Ringmaster, perhaps you’d like to wait inside? Or I can tell him that you were here. But it might be better for you to wait inside. He’s not likely to go to the barn tonight.” The page looks almost pleading. “Please, sir, I can take you to the kitchen and get you something to eat if you’re worried about making a mess.”

Part of Jean wants to turn around and run back to the barn, to get away from the creepy, overeager little page and go back to his comfort zone. The other part of him heard about free food, and that decides it. The monsters aren’t the only ones in the barn who could use some variety in their diets.

“Okay.” He leans forward to brush the dust and monster hairs off his pants, then stands and looks at the page. “Let’s go.”

The page nods, eagerly, and holds the door open for him. Jean walks through, and is swallowed into the Ringmaster’s house.

As ornate as it is outside, as lavish and grand, the inside feels cavernous, like it’s trying to swallow him whole in a vast, endless plain. The entryway is dim, light filtering through thick, heavy curtains drawn only partly back from the windows, and Jean needs to stand still for a moment and let his eyes adjust. The page, apparently used to such, stands next to him and waits patiently, and as Jean’s vision adjusts, he takes in the Ringmaster’s home.

It’s sparkling clean, he notices, the air free from dust motes and every surface shining, and he worries again about the dust and monster hair on his clothing. He probably even has hay chaff in his hair, and he reaches up to run a hand through it nervously. The room is sparsely decorated, most of the floor bare to expose an elaborate, beautiful mosaic made of colored glass, showing monsters and demons battling each other on a backdrop of green and blue waves. The furniture is neat and tucked out of the way, and implements of magic and sorcery hang on the walls.

It’s just like the Ringmaster, he thinks as the page starts walking and he falls in step behind him. It’s beautiful, but closed off. This isn’t a home, but an illusion of one. Jean hasn’t had a home himself in many years, but he remembers how it feels to have one, and it does not feel like this. This is a crypt full of restless ghosts.

And, knowing the Ringmaster, probably some real ghosts as well.

The page leads him through room after room, each one having the sparse, unlived-in quality of the ones before, and Jean notices it’s getting colder and colder, the deeper they get into the house. Outside, it had been a still, muggy early summer day, the clouds hanging low and silver-bellied in the sky, promising rain that just wouldn’t come; in the house, it feels like the darkness days of winter. The page notices when Jean puts his arms around himself and shivers, and smiles apologetically. “There’s a fire in the kitchen. It will be warmer there.”

Jean nods, his breath pluming in front of him like smoke when he exhales, and wonders why the little page doesn’t seem affected by the cold at all.

They turn a corner, and Jean stops in his tracks, gasping and filling his lungs with air so cold that it hurts, and bites back on a curse of shock.

The room is completely empty, with not a stick of furniture in it, the only decoration another floor mosaic, this one a scene of flames, done all in reds and oranges, so detailed and elaborate that it looks like it’s flickering when Jean looks at it out of the corner of his eye. In one corner of the room, shoved almost carelessly up against a wall, is a piece of ice larger than any Jean has ever seen. It towers, looming, radiating cold, and Jean walks closer, fascinated. Shades of blue he never dreamed existed dance deep inside the ice, mesmerizing him, and he lifts one hand to touch it.

The page darts in next to him and slaps his hand away. Jean blinks, and it feels like the room undergoes a tiny shift, centering him back into himself and into the present. The blue light still dances inside the ice, but now it just looks like pretty colors, instead of something he could lose himself inside.

The page is apologizing. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you! I thought you would have seen it before!”

Jean waves a hand, brushing off his apologies. “What _is_ it?”

The page calms down, though he still looks flustered. “Can’t you see them?” He gestures to the ice, pointing deep into its center. “Look again.”

Jean takes a step closer, and the cold emanating off the ice chills his cheeks and makes the tip of his nose go numb. He looks again, and his breath catches in his throat when he sees them.

There are two, frozen in the center of the ice. They both look mostly human-like, although somehow strikingly alien at the same time. One is pale, its exposed skin an ivory white and its hair a blonde so pale it’s almost white as well. Its body, lithe and feminine, is covered with shining ice crystals, almost as though its wearing a short dress made of snow, and it has one small, delicate foot caught in the action of swinging forward, like it’s trying to knock the other monster off its feet. The other monster is going for an attack as well, one arm extending forward, muscles standing out clearly from its slender arm. It looks feminine too, as dark haired as the other is pale, with a faint golden hue to its skin. It’s nude but for an impossibly long red scarf, flowing around its body and somehow covering it more completely than the other monster’s dress of snow.

They’re beautiful, both of them, caught in an act of violence and aggression, and Jean needs to look away, turning his attention back to the page. The pale monster has eyes that remind him of the fire spirits, only instead of licking flames its eyes are shimmering, shifting ice crystals, and Jean gets the uneasy feeling that it’s watching everything they do. “What are they?”

The page smiles, and Jean notices that his smiles never reach his eyes; they’re always the same, dark and lonely and lost. “They’re an ice spirit and a water spirit.”

“Really?” Jean believes him, but that doesn’t sound quite right. “I thought ice and water spirits were related to each other, and didn’t fight.”

“Some do.” The page touches the block of ice, and for the first time, Jean notices that he’s wearing mittens on his hands. The page looks into the block of ice, and for just a moment, he looks impossibly lost. When he turns back, though, he’s wearing the polite mask of a servant again. “But surely you’re getting cold. Come, the kitchen isn’t far.”

Jean is suddenly aware of how chilly it is in the room, and follows the page out. He looks over his shoulder one last time, and he swears that both the frozen monsters are watching him as he leaves.

The kitchen has a fire burning in the hearth, and it looks more homey and lived in than the rest of the house. The page is obviously more comfortable there, and he starts bustling about, making Jean a cup of tea and presenting him with a plate of cookies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: oak is the national tree of Germany.
> 
> Does this chapter seem like it ends really abruptly? That's because it does; there's quite a bit more I wanted to add, but I had this terrible roadblock. I knew where I wanted the story to go, I knew what was going to happen... but writing it just wasn't happening.
> 
> You see, I'm very pleased with the setting and the universe of The Emporium, but Jean hasn't felt like Jean to me for quite awhile. I feel like he's starting to get into Vaan from Final Fantasy XII/Bella Swann territory, where there's all this cool stuff happening around him and he's just sitting back passively and letting it happen. No, not cool, not cool at all. In addition, it's been getting progressively harder to insert the other characters into the story. The fire spirit and the centaur are getting awfully friendly, aren't they? When did that happen? _How_ did that happen? I want to explore that, and it's not like Jean is just going to casually stroll up to the fire spirit and ask it about its relationship with the centaur. Moreover, he won't start a conversation with the gorgon, who has been very much in the periphery, or the chimaera, and they both have a lot to say once you get them going.
> 
> But the centaur would talk to them...
> 
> To make a long story short, this will be the last new chapter of The Emporium for awhile. I'm going to go back and start from the beginning again, and this time write it as a first person narrative, with alternating viewpoints. The basic plot will be the same, but it'll be told in a way that, I think, will be more conducive to world exploration and will also get some of the minor characters out there and interacting.
> 
> With that in mind, I leave you with this teaser: the ice spirit and the water spirit are _totally_ going to throw down at some point.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll be patient with me as I revamp this whole thing.


End file.
